


Edge

by phoenixnz



Series: Nightwing Chronicles [10]
Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Smallville
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2019-01-22 07:07:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12476096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixnz/pseuds/phoenixnz
Summary: Bruce begins developing the Batman persona and gets Edge to confess to murdering Lionel's parents.





	Edge

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not totally happy with the confrontation between Bruce and Morgan Edge but, meh ...
> 
> Some dialogue is taken from Batman Begins

Bruce had been studying ways he could begin to clean up the streets of Gotham, but there were more pressing matters to attend to. Not only did they have the problem of the stones, he needed something to aid Lex in his battle against his father. 

Alfred, bless him, had been helping with the second problem by contacting some of his former colleagues in Special Forces. One of them had managed to dig up a location on the elusive Morgan Edge. 

Determined to get the truth about Lionel’s sordid past, Bruce decided to go to Metropolis without telling Lex. His friend was continuing to work at Luthorcorp so he could get more information about his father’s activities. 

Only a couple of weeks earlier, Lionel had put a file on his desk about a company called SynTechnics. Lex had studied the file and alerted Clark to a particular project. A scientist named Alistair Krieg had been experimenting with cybernetics and had taken a young man who had been a football player at Metropolis High school. Victor Stone had been involved in a horrific car accident which had killed his parents and little sister. Krieg had taken it upon himself to implant electrical and mechanical parts; bionics. There had been several others but only Victor had survived the experiments.

Lex had secretly contacted one of the researchers, James Hong, who seemed to have more of a sympathetic side to him. Hong had agreed to help Victor escape and Clark had brought him to Gotham. 

Lionel had bought out SynTechnics and expected Lex to run the operation, along with the Smallville plant. Fortunately for Lex, his father had not figured out that Lex was behind the escape and subsequent disappearance of Victor Stone. Without its chief asset, SynTechnics was seriously in the red and not even Lionel would help. 

Before Bruce went to Metropolis, he had gone to talk to Bill Earle, once Wayne Enterprises’ vice-president. Bill had taken over as CEO when Bruce’s father had been killed. 

“What can I do for you, Mr Wayne?” he asked.

Earle was aged in his late fifties. A stocky man with close-cropped grey hair and grey eyes hidden behind wire-rimmed glasses. He had been one of the first to offer his condolences after Bruce’s parents had been murdered and had promised Bruce the company would be in good hands until the young heir was old enough to take over. 

Despite the fact that Bruce had been back from Asia more than six months, it appeared the older man had no intentions of relinquishing his seat of power. Not that it mattered, Bruce decided. He had other, better uses of his time. 

Earle looked completely at ease in the huge leather chair behind the desk in the CEO’s office. 

“I hope you’re not here about this morning’s article,” Earle said. Bruce knew which article he was referring to. Alfred had shown it to him at breakfast. The Gotham Tribune article had stated the CEO was pushing the board to go public, selling shares to investors. As much as Bruce objected to this, he knew confronting the older man about it wouldn’t do any good. 

“I’m not here to interfere,” he assured the CEO. “Actually, I’m looking for a job.”

Earle raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Really?”

“I just want to get to know the company my family built.”

The older man’s knowing smirk was irritating but Bruce ignored it. When he was asked which department, he gave a firm answer. He’d read the company’s prospectus and done some research online. Lucius Fox, who worked in Applied Sciences, was more than just a researcher. From what Bruce could gather, Earle had stuck him in the division to oversee some old projects but it was more to push the old man into retiring. 

Lucius Fox was in his late sixties at best. An African-American man, his astuteness was cleverly hidden by his easy-going manner and soft tone. His expression gave nothing away as he looked Bruce up and down.

“What did they tell you this place was?”

Bruce shrugged. “Nothing.”

Fox smirked. “Earle told me exactly what it was when he sent me down here. Dead end.” Bruce looked at him. The older man elaborated. “To keep me from causing the board any more trouble.”

“You were on the board?”

“In your father’s day,” he said. “I helped him design his train.”

The train, Bruce thought. It had once been a marvel of modern technology, running high above the city. Now it was neglected. Each car was covered in graffiti. The city fathers had refused to fund any security and anyone travelling on the train was at risk of being mugged, or worse. 

Fox showed Bruce around the department and some of the projects that were no longer in production. This was what he was looking for, he thought as he picked up a magnetic grapple gun and a utility harness. There was more. A survival suit with Kevlar biweave which was tear-resistant and bulletproof to almost anything. 

When the researcher asked him what he was interested in, he picked up the suit. He smirked at the older man, telling him he wanted to borrow it.

“For what exactly?”

“Spelunking.” Fox looked sceptical.

“Spelunking?”

“Yeah, you know. Cave diving.”

The older man cocked an eyebrow. “You expecting to run into much gunfire in these caves, Mr Wayne?”

More like thousands of bats, Bruce thought, but Fox didn’t need to know that. He took the gear, extracting a promise that the other man not reveal anything to Mr Earle. Since the equipment was technically owned by Bruce anyway, it was irrelevant. Fox shrugged, clearly not about to tell the CEO a damn thing. It was obvious there was no love lost between the two men. 

As Bruce turned to go, he remembered Victor Stone. 

“Oh, I was wondering if I could ask a small favour.” 

Fox frowned. “A favour?”

“Yeah. You see, I have this, uh, friend. Let’s just say he was the guinea pig in an experiment. I thought you could help him learn a little bit about what’s been done to him. Maybe even help him figure out what to do with his life. How much do you know about cybernetics?”

“Clearly not enough. Where is this friend?”

“He’s staying at the penthouse at the moment. Not that I wouldn’t have offered him a place at the manor, but he preferred being on his own. He had some things to sort out with his girlfriend.”

“What’s his name?”

“Victor Stone. And, uh, please keep this confidential. The people who did this experiment on him might still be looking for him.”

“You can trust me, Mr Wayne.”

Bruce looked the man over. “You know, I really think I can.”

Things were slowly moving into place. Alfred had helped him design a disguise which used the suit and had ordered various parts which would make up the rest of it. Since some of it was coming by ship, it would take about a month or so to get to Gotham. Bruce decided his trip to Metropolis would be perfect for a trial run of his new identity. 

He wore black clothing similar to what he’d worn to break into Cadmus with Lex, making sure to use a voice modulator to give his voice a deeper timbre. 

Morgan Edge owned a club in Metropolis called Atlantis. From what Bruce could gather, Lionel left the club alone despite its location in an area currently undergoing ‘urban renewal’. The Luthorcorp CEO had more or less washed his hands of his childhood friend, leaving the running of the local criminal factions to Edge while he preferred to blackmail and threaten his way up the Fortune 500 list. 

Bruce had earlier scoped out the club by paying the bouncer to let him in. He’d pretended to party, attracting a lot of attention from both male and female dancers on the floor. He’d long ago decided to create his own image as a party boy; a playboy only interested in frivolous pursuits. He pretended to be drunk although he’d barely touched a drop of alcohol. 

When Lex or Clark called him, they would tease him about the gossip around town in which the local gossip rag would imply he was a brainless himbo. He figured if he kept up that reputation, no one would even consider for a moment that he might be the masked figure. He still hadn’t thought up a name for his new identity but it would come to him. 

Bruce chose a night when Atlantis closed early. By early, that meant 2am instead of 4am. Edge usually did this once every two weeks. Bruce had figured out that he did that so he could plan a raid, either on a bank or an armoured car. 

He quietly made his way to the second floor of the club. Edge had a large office which took up half the floor space of the entire building. He flattened himself against the window and peeked in. The club owner and Intergang leader was leaning over a long table, discussing something with two of his men. One of the men had what looked like a cross tattooed on his cheek. 

Taking the grapple gun from his utility harness, Bruce fired it into the glass and pulled the pane out of the frame before jumping in through the window. The two goons pulled out their guns but he rushed them, attacking them with both fists, then kicking out, knocking them both out quickly. 

He turned and glared at Morgan Edge. The man was around Lionel’s age with almost shoulder-length flowing blond hair and intense blue eyes. Bruce held up the grapple gun. The other man stared at him.

“Who the hell are you?”

“I’ll ask the questions. Tell me about Lachlan and Eliza Luthor.”

“Son, I don’t know what you think you’re doing …”

Bruce pulled a sheaf of papers from beneath his vest and dumped it on the table. Included in the papers were photographs of Edge as a young man, next to Lionel Luthor.

“You and Lionel Luthor were friends as teenagers. I know about the bomb you two planted in his parents’ apartment.”

Edge smirked at him. “You would have a hard time proving it,” he said. 

“That’s where you come in. You’re going to tell me everything.”

“And what makes you think I’ll co-operate with you?”

Bruce didn’t answer. He grabbed the man by his shirt collar and pulled him out of the building, using the man’s belt to hook him to the harness. He then fired the grapple gun and used it to pull himself up to the top of the building. Edge looked at him, clearly wondering what he was doing. 

Bruce smirked at him underneath the mask and clipped the man’s belt to a tensile steel cord he had hooked to the utility harness before tossing the crime boss off the building. Edge screamed as the ground approached at top speed. He brought the man back up.

“How about now?” he asked. 

Making sure there was no connection to Lex or to Bruce Wayne, Bruce took the confession to Lieutenant Gordon, lurking outside his apartment until he came out. The officer stared at him in the mask.

“What are you supposed to be?” he asked.

Ignoring his question, Bruce looked at the man.

“You’re a good cop,” he said. “One of the few.” He handed a tape to the other man. “This should be enough to start an investigation into Lionel Luthor.”

“What is it?”

“A confession to a murder that happened nearly forty years ago.”

“Metropolis is a little out of my jurisdiction.”

“Doesn’t matter. It’ll get the ball rolling.”

Mission accomplished, he thought as he left the apartment. Gordon had a point, but it would be enough. As long as it didn’t ricochet right back onto Lex. 

He began working in the cave, gathering information on various crime bosses in Gotham. While he wanted to target the likes of Carmine Falcone, he knew he needed to build up a name for himself first. 

He paid two more visits to Lucius, picking up what the research and development head called memory cloth. He then commandeered a vehicle which had been made for the army, called a Tumbler. It was perfect for what he needed.

Alfred was often reluctant to come down to the caves, eyeing the bats gathered on the ceiling with trepidation. 

Bruce had made blades out of steel in the shape of a bat. His butler watched as he experimented with one of the blades, throwing it so it was embedded in the wall.

“Why bats, Master Wayne?”

“Bats frighten me,” Bruce told him, remembering falling down the well as a child and being surrounded by them. He wasn’t the only one afraid, he thought. Fear was a powerful weapon, he realised. Soon the whole of Gotham would know the same kind of dread. 

Alfred placed a packet on the table. “Something arrived from Asia, sir,” he said. “I believe you and Master Clark have been looking for this.”

Frowning, Bruce opened the packet, then smiled up at his guardian. 

A few days later, he managed to engineer a meeting with both Clark and Lex. Clark had been trying to get a job with the Daily Planet, but so far hadn’t been successful. The editor-in-chief, a woman named Pauline Kahn, had told him that while he had done some good stories for the paper at Princeton, he still lacked experience. Clark was considering going travelling for a year. 

Lex, meanwhile, was just trying to keep his father from finding out he was behind the sabotage of several projects. Lionel was still annoyed over the failure of SynTechnics and had developed a weapon to be used by the US Navy called Leviathan. Lex had had no choice but to go along with it and for his trouble had been targeted by a young man from Miami University who seemed to hold him personally responsible for the way the weapon was killing off marine life. 

Fortunately, Clark had been able to intervene between Arthur Curry and Lex before things had got worse. Lex had quietly been relieved when AC, as he was nicknamed, was able to sabotage the weapon during a test and the navy admiral in charge of funding for the project had pulled out. 

Luthorcorp’s finances were taking a beating and Lionel was not happy. Lex, on the other hand, was gleeful. 

“You should have seen his face when he heard about the project,” he told Bruce, grinning ear to ear. 

“Good. Things are progressing on the other front,” Bruce told his friend. “I heard from Jim Gordon that the FBI is now taking an interest.”

“So how are things going with Batman?” Clark asked. Bruce frowned at him. “Didn’t you hear? That’s what they’re calling you.”

“Going well, I think,” he said, smirking to himself at the name. Yeah, that could work. “I’m looking at trying to modify the suit though. It’s limiting my movements a bit. I need something with a bit more flexibility.”

“I’ve been working on something myself,” Lex said. “I thought about using neoprene, but I don’t think it’ll work too well. Do you think your R&D guy might have something else I can use?”

“I can ask him. Will you be able to slip away next weekend? You could always tell your father you’re going cave-diving, or something.”

Lex smirked. “Yeah, like that’s believable. What do you tell Mr Fox?”

“We have a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy. I think he’s cottoned on I’m Batman, but he hasn't said anything, even to me.”

“Good. The last thing we want is that getting out.”

“Anyway, Clark, I have something for you.” Bruce handed him the packet Alfred had given him. “My people think they located the last stone. In China.”

Clark quickly read the documents and looked at the photographs. He looked up at them. 

“Looks like I’m going to China,” he said.


End file.
